User Reviews

A flick that tries to be more than it is.

It's about some monsters wrecking havoc on the tenants of some apartment building in Los Angeles.

Although everybody who took any part in this desperately tried to make this flick look like more - there is one big problem: even if you have the money to do it, it doesn't mean squat if you don't have any talent to do something with it.

First of all the actors are just plain awful, the dialogues are boring and mostly don't make any sense at all.

The whole screenplay just sucks - there is no suspense no thrill - just boredom.

And the worst of it is the directing - all chances of making something out of that flick are just wasted.

A young Hitchcock, John Carpenter or Wes Craven would have made something good or decent out of that flick - even with no-budget.

But not this "director" Better watch "Paranormal Acitivity".

Don't waste your time with that failed attempt at acting, screen-writing, and directing.

I watched this movie just get over Uwe Boll's stupid dead people's disease movies. I must say i was quite impressed in the beginning. Some couples and their stories, nice acting and family presentation, and a good plot: it's Christmas eve and westphalia is under quakes and severe high temperatures with power surges going around the city( Los Angeles that is) . Scientists can't figure it out. There's a Christmas party in a tenement block, and the couples presented are living in the same building - 1 family (man + woman + man's brother + 2 kids boy and girl) , 1 about-to-get-divorced-couple, 1 about-to-get-married-couple, and some random dudes and girls. The newsman tells the power-surges are connected with the temperature and the quakes.

Mom and dad are trying to have fun(in bed) but the kids find them out and they get sent to the basement to bring up their presents. Nasty creature eats their guts.

There's an agoraphobic guy at the 2nd floor, friend with the superintendent and the electrician, and he's a master in discovery channel and electronics and communications. Electrician "Ralph" gets torn to bits. The party is ruined, more creatures come and claim lives. Some guy's brother tries something he saw on TV ("Hey the creatures might be photosensitive" ) but he gets a big head-shot and dies. The little girl is not dead - apparently she managed to survive ( somehow I have no idea ) and she got in a defunct elevator ( again HOW is a big question ). The group manages to kill 2 creatures, find out the main building entrance is blocked and head for the roof. They go through that defunct elevator's shaft and find out the little girl.

The dad and dad's brother end up dead, and tadam: 3 survivors - The mom, the little girl and that agoraphobic fat guy. They get to the roof where they see LA has been torn apart by some nasty volcano-type spikes ( ?!WTF ) that erected from the underground. They start squirting something out from their top (lava probably), and... that's it.. The movie ends. I must say the ending was very stupid. I expected the military or something to grab and save them...like "ye mam we got everythin under control". There's no outcome. The FX were pretty good I must say...

OVERALL:

Plot: 9/10

Roles & Play: 8/10

Script: 4/10

FX : 7/10

Ending: -1/10 (and yes that's a negative)

Monster Behaviour: 5/10 (it's monster movie after all)

This has got to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The movie is about some people trapped on a building, after a major blackout. It seems that it was caused by some weird monsters that were also inside the building. It's going to be hard to review this movie, since even after seeing I know nothing about it.

For starters, there is absolutely no plot. Just some people having a party. You barely get to know the characters name's, You don't know who the monsters are, where they came from, nothing. The acting is also terrible. The special effects aren't bad but are nothing special either. As the movie progresses you get the idea that the characters are paid just to die. Whenever a monster comes they just stand there, watching. Also, why wouldn't they try to exit the building? The elevators were off due to the power cut, but what about the stairs?

One major "goof" that I recall from the movie is when they go to the basement looking for their kids(Ashley and Kyle). The oldest brother spots a shoe and starts moaning and the mother comes running. He doesn't let her see whatever was on the floor, yet she starts crying "Poor Kyle". How did she know it was her son and not her daughter? It could have been both too. Another one is Ashley being in the elevator, in the end. She was trapped in the basement but in the end of the movie, she appears trapped in the elevator, some floors above. How did she get there? There are some terrible movies that are entertaining, so the overall isn't as bad as it should be, but this one..

Plot: 1/10

Acting: 3/10

Sound: 6/10

Special effects: 5/10

Overall: 3

This is the movie I have been waiting for - something a bit off the beaten plot formula, with a fresh take on deadly creatures. For the gore-hounds, there are plenty of kills, and some unique ones to boot! From beginning to end, I had no idea what was coming next, and each corner the storyline took you around brought another layer of depth that made you want to know more, more, more. I think I'd actually really truly enjoy a sequel. Now, go see the film... or keep reading if you don't mind a few spoilers.

**SPOILER ALERT** I thought the entire concept of a whole separate ecosystem that developed obviously deep beneath the earth's crust fascinating. And that one concept was deftly woven throughout the film. The actors, while not exactly dishing out award winning performances on Oscar night, still lent good and genuine reactions when coming face to face with unworldly and possibly ungodly creatures - which I think about 9.9 times out of 10 ended quite poorly for the human...

The film does make you consider another concept entirely of an apocalyptic end to the earth, depends on your views on religion and prophecy. But, all in all, this film is extremely worth the watch. Bravo to writer, director, actors, make-up and effects artists - it was a wonderful blending of talents and vision that I will be seeing again and recommending to family and friends. I am now going to add glow-sticks to my Emergency Disaster End of the World Kit.

We open with a family and the fathers slacker brother having Christmas dinner. Their next door neighbors are throwing a Christmas party, they're a bunch of lame D-bags. Some guy awaiting his soon to be divorced wife's return. And some agoraphobic dork with a short wave transmitter. The city has been suffering small earth quakes all day and mild blackouts do to the earth quakes it would seem.

After a small family fight the parents go into the bedroom for some unplanned alone time. The daughter comes in and catches them and inquires as to what they're doing. The parents reply "We're playing." The daughter replies "Can I play too." This also occurs when the son enters the room. The son is sent to the basement to get his Christmas present? On the other side of the script the guy and his soon to be divorced wife mildly argue about something and he storms off to the party.

Then if this movie didn't have enough pointlessly intertwining plots some other couple gets tossed in so they can die. They're in love thats about all they have going for them.

The party seems to be filled with the types of people that you avoided in college. Basically rich kids who tell bad jokes, hit on their best friends significant other, and whose social skills were acquired at keg parties or discotheques.

And then yes more characters are brought in to die. A rather large man and his small and disgustingly sleazy friend.

At this point the son has gone to the basement for his gift and noticed these alien like shell creatures with slimy tails being dragged across the floor by fishing line (no joke it was like an Ed Wood film). Then one of these creatures sheds its shell and grows roughly 100 times it's size in about two seconds. And then it's dinner time.

Dad and the daughter decide to go search for dinner time but for some bizarre reason only the daughter gets in the elevator (which I'm still not sure why the characters are still using since every ten seconds or so there's another earth quake). And guess who doesn't think to use the stairs to follow her? Once in the basement desert sees the trail of blood only after getting off the elevator. She hears noises and hides.

At this point weird nerd guy with the short wave radios get a visit from the super and an electrician they decide to go into the hallway. The electrician gets it in the gut. This is when the super and dork come to the conclusion that the creatures emit an electromagnetic signal that disrupts electricity and thus screws with the lights.

At the party the guy with the ex starts being aggressively hit on by the hostess and is caught by his soon to be ex. Finally noises start coming from a bedroom and the hostess goes to check it out. The monsters are pretty much the shape of a human with what appears to be an exoskeleton but it's actually skin and it's covered in sweet and sour sauce. It's face is sort of Venom from Spider-man and it has a tail with a razor sharp pincer on the end of it. I't grabs sleazy hostess and begins to devour her. The big guy who had just finished telling a story that he heard someone else tell at a fraternity party five years prior pulls out a hand gun with a light attached to it. Then he pulls out another one. Yes, thats right from his waist area he pulls out not one but two handguns both with lights attached to them. I often go to Christmas parties with two hand guns.

All the party people try to get into the next door families house and have to kick the door in to get some sanctuary yet for some reason the parent don't want to help them and insist that they all leave immediately. Finally the guy who was really gross and came with the big guy with two guns drops some knowledge on the crew by explaining that the creature must be photosensitive yo! Dang ain't you never watched the discovery channel. Whack a@* crackers! And suggests to try and hurt the creature with light while the others make a run for the stair well. They get to the stairwell but Discovery channel gets the pincers to the throat.

For some reason guy and girl who are in love stay behind in the families apartment. The guy puts a ring on girls finger and she gets the pincers to the skull. Guy drops the other gun and walks out into the hallway covered in her blood. The Charlton Heston guy hears their screams and decides to go back up.

There's an awesome goof right here regarding the floor number they go down the stairs by the third floor twice. On floor two they meet up with Super and Dork. The earth quakes are being caused by sharp rocks coming from underground and one has blocked the entrance, The ladies are left on the second floor stairwell landing (except for mom) so the men can go search for the kids. In the basement they encounter two of the monsters and actually you never see more than two at a time which leads me to think that they only had two monster suits made. They kill one and then another and the mom cries because they find dinner times shoe.

I'm running out of space so I'll let the end anger you as it did, me.

The script was sub-par. The acting was dry, completely lacking of sincerity, and just generally unbelievable. There seemed to be no direction and no one around to examine what was being done with a critical eye. The monsters were beyond lame. Zero explanations were offered.

This was the worst film ever, at each turn you could either:

a) guess the outcome b) write a better scene

The movie had all the potential to be good, a interesting mix of characters (combined with the usual monster fodder "spare" people)

There was no real explanation of why all this was happening, despite there even being the techno/nerd character with the usual hardware

Why were so many points raised and then discarded. e.g. the smell of sulphur suggesting some demonic influence? The creatures being photo sensitive and yet showing no problem with light sources? Why did the black guy have a gun, and where did he get the second one from?

This was very much a made for TV movie, to be shown during the 2am -4am slot!

If there was a hope to make this into a series with humans valiantly battling each week for survival then please don't!

The Blackout is set in Los Angeles & starts on Christmas Eve as the city has been suffering from a heat wave, minor tremors have also been causing the local authorities concern. The Ravenwood apartment block is almost empty, most of the residents have left for the Christmas holidays but a select few are still living there hoping to have a happy Christmas. Suddenly a city wide power cut causes a mass blackout, candles & torches are the only source of light as the few remaining residents of Ravenwood discover that the apartment block has been infested with carnivorous creatures that like the taste of human flesh. With no lights or way of contacting the outside world for help the small number of residents must work together to try & get to safety before they all become monster food...

Edited & directed by Robert David Sanders this typical low budget Creature Feature mix of Alien (1979) & The Mist (2007) as a group of faceless clichés are trapped in an isolated location & are hunted down by some generic creatures, the whole film is lacklustre & takes most if not all of it's ideas from better films. From the one dimensional character's who make you root for the monsters to the script that never really tries to tie anything together, the origins of the creatures are never explained except that there's a hole in the basement floor, the whole electro magnetic field angle isn't covered to any great satisfaction, the human survivors plans to escape the monsters just seem silly with one guy actually trying to find one to test some silly idea out he has & the significance of the tremors or where those huge rock spires come from is left unclear. Then there's the stupid script that has people do stupid things, people constantly split up, while being chased by flesh eating monsters these people keep stopping for little chats, some guy randomly decided to bring a gun to a Christmas party, after seeing a long trail of blood a little girl decides to follow it rather than run, the whole elevator shaft escape turns ordinary people into superhuman climbers & when the elevator does drop why does it explode like it was full of explosives? The character's are bland & forgettable, to be honest I had a hard time keeping track of who liked who, who was related to who & who hated who since they all lack any sort of personality. At a shade under 80 minutes at least it's short & there are worse films out there but as far as Creature Feature horror films go The Blackout isn't anything to get excited about at all.

The main area of interest in a film such as The Blackout is obviously the monsters themselves, here they look exactly like what they are, men in rubber monster suits & a CGI style Scorpion tail. They are pretty inanimate, they open their mouths & occasionally blink but there's no great facial movement or dripping slime or moving tongue or any little detail that might truly convince us that these creatures might actually be real. There's a bit of gore, someone is decapitated & their body slides down a wall independently of their severed head, there's some blood splatter & a monster sticks the end of it's tail into a woman's face. Despite taking place during a total city wide blackout there seems to be a lot of light about, especially in the basement & the elevator shaft which really should have been pitch black.

Filmed in Los Angeles on what was probably a low budget The Blackout does look quite slick at times though the effects are no better than average & the clean modern apartment building interiors fail to generate much interest, tension or atmosphere. The acting is pretty bland but none of the actor's are given much to work with.

The Blackout is a by the numbers people trapped in an isolated location getting killed off by monsters type horror film, while not the worst of it's kind the negatives like people splitting up all the time outweigh the positives like a short duration.

I guess not. Good quality is what I look for in a film and even if it's cheap, it can still have the capabilities of being good and drawing the viewer into deep suspense and dread (Flesh Feast being an excellent example), but as for this cheap film, I couldn't concentrate on it at all.

The power goes out in a large apartment building, a family in one unit and the party goers in the unit next door to them start freaking out about monsters in their midst. Now, this is the part where I should have gotten drawn in and scared for those people and worried about the creatures popping out from any dark corner in the building, but that wasn't the case. I was too busy wondering how much longer this movie will be.

The script, acting and action scenes were so low caliber that it got my mind wandering too much. Sure, there were a couple of quick suspense scenes - the crab claws lunging forward and plunging into the victims, but that's about it. I worried about the little girl at first who went to look for her brother in the basement, but later on just didn't care. After first spotting one of the monsters, she lets out a loud scream and later, throughout the movie, she's shown hiding in different places and screaming whenever she peers out from her concealment. With all that racket she made, it's a wonder the creatures never caught her at the beginning. It's a miracle too how she ended up back in that elevator after she got off in the basement just before the power went out.

Interesting to note too that in a building of that size, there's only a skeleton crew of tenants, guests and building personnel around to combat the horror. Nobody else is present. They may as well have moved the setting to Al Capone's secret vault.

The most fatal flaw to a movie is if it can't drag you in and keep your attention, then it's not worth seeing in the first place. This one is a good example of that. It's a One Star affair, but I gave it an extra one for those teeny bits of exciting suspense.

I enjoyed this movie, I'll admit it was cheaply made, a relatively unknown cast, and I've a feeling quite a lot of necessary stuff was probably left on the editing room floor.

But I enjoyed it.

The child actors were believable, always a plus in my book, when a director knows cute does not equal talent.

The characters were real and engaging, some you root for, some you root to get eaten, but because they are truly obnoxious people.

But where this film scores is in its wonderful original monsters. Evil, merciless, dangerous and revolting manticore like, subterranean obsidian horrors.

The ending is amongst the most shocking Lovecraft cosmic horror kick in the teeth I have seen in a long time.

I stumbled across this movie and although the artwork was a feast ripoff it had an interesting plot ( who isn't afraid of the dark) so I gave it a chance.

plot rundown, some people - where one has armed himself with not one but two guns.. still curious what his plans for that party were before the monsters came, might be an interesting movie hidden there somewhere- get trapped inside a building when a blackout happens and are stalked and killed by scorpion like monsters.

Running at a pleasingly short running time, by my accounts it didn't hit the 90 mins mark its a mixed bag.

I can agree with most of the other user comments in regards that it is a very low budget movie ( must be the only building in the city with around 10 people living in it) and speaking of the building; they used a very different building for the outside shots, clearly visible if you look at the windows. It had some crap acting and some CGI that makes a play station graphic look state of the art. And yes the story had some holes in it you could drive a truck through.. but..

The idea behind the movie is cool, the monsters are at least somewhat original and it has a minimal ( but still there unfortunately) amount of padding. So if you catch on to the idea behind this you can be forgiving. What makes it hard at times are the awful actors ( nobody makes anything of his part so you have a small dozen of cannon fodder entries) the plot holes and goofs that are so evident it becomes disturbing ( best example is the climatic..yeah well, I give them a break.. climb through the elevator shaft where it is clearly seen the camera is tilted and nobody is actually climbing.. kinda kills the scene). And if you try to convince even the most forgiving audience that there is an earthquake, please try to let the wine in the glass move too instead of just shaking the camera.

But all in all for a micro budgeted, main actor produced and funded end of the world movie you can get worse. At least it is a hell of a step up from your normal micro budgeted zombie, slasher, inbred, cannibal movie you normally encounter. You could see that the ideas were there, some skill was there but the budget was too tight. The ending however does make for a nice sequel in the veins of resident evil 2.